Great tips for MS Excel

Over the last few month I have been working on Microsoft Office for some important assignments. And while working on it I learned some new things that I would like to share with you people.


Below are the tips and tricks to use Microsoft Excel:

Working with date and time in your data: If your data has lots of date and time, you can change the format of the date and time as desired. To do that right click the entire row which contains date and time and click the FORMAT CELLS – hit the NUMBER tab. Popup showing you the possible date formats will be given. Similarly you can work on other data formats also depending on what your data is, for example general, number, currency, date, time, percentage etc.

You have copy pasted the data say from a word file or some website into your excel, but the data is not dumped properly in the excel file. What do you do? Simple copy-paste the data first into a notepad and then from there copy again and paste it into your excel file. Notepad removes all the formatting that goes with the data while copying it from such sources.

You have copied the data from a source to MS Excel, but there are lots of blank cells in between the data range. You want to get rid of these blank cells. How do you do that? Select the entire data range, hit F5 button from your keyboard, a GoTo dialog box will open, click on the button ‘Special’ from the bottom left of that dialog box, you will get many options to chose from, select BLANKS and hit OK, on doing so only the blank cells will be selected, you can now very carefully right click on any 1 of the blank cell (make sure you don’t click anywhere outside the blank cell) and say delete. This will delete all the blank cells from your data range.

The GoTo dialog box selects the data which has the formatting or similar data as the option you have selected in the SPECIAL box. You have many options to chose from here.

There are other mathematical formulas that MS excel can perform within no seconds with just one click like: Addition, subtraction, multiplication, division etc.

To add numbers: Select an empty cell, and click on the Summation icon (for those who do not know what summation icon is it is found in the toolbar), and select the data you want to add and hit keyboard enter key and it is done.

For Subtraction: Select an empty cell, type = and then select the first number which you want to subtract and then type the minus sign – and select the second number and hit the keyboard enter key. Same goes for other mathematical operations like multiplication and division.

Well this is just for the starters. There is lots more to come in my next blog, so keep waiting, and yes don’t forget to share your tips and tricks on excel by commenting on this blog.

-Stella Roy

Online War:Yahoo, Google & Microsoft on the Battlefield

The big question these days that has kept everybody on the edge of their seat is; Will Microsoft buy Yahoo?

The .com boom has certainly return back with a bang after it burst in the year 2000. The buzz is that, Microsoft the leading software making company has raise their claims from $30 Billion to $ 80 Billion for Yahoo.com. Yahoo is the largest and most visited website in terms of number of hits per day.

The war between the two giants, Microsoft and Google took a new twist after Google acquired Double Click, a online advertising company for $3.6 Billion. It is alleged that Microsoft was deliberately raising the stake for Double click to more then $3 Billion without real intention of buying it.

Now, Microsoft who competes with Google in web application field is going all gun out to get Yahoo.com. It is believed that Yahoo has rejected the initial Microsoft bid. But considering the competition faced by Yahoo from both Google and Microsoft, it won’t be easy for Yahoo to maintain its numero Uno position on the web.

On the other hand, Yahoo and Google competes with each other directly in Online advertising and online search engines arena. Both these online giants have huge share of their total revenue coming from online search and advertising. In fact Google gets more then 98% of its revenue from their Ad words program. The best option for Yahoo.com is to sale out to either Google or Microsoft. There is no way Yahoo can compete with Google in online market alone. They require someone as big as Microsoft to keep them ahead of Google.

My final assumption is, this time it would be difficult for Yahoo to turn down the offer from the Software giant.

Your views / comments are what I look forward to.

-Stella Roy

Microsoft and Windows Vista

They say Microsoft is killing competition. Various Big enterprises fear that Microsoft will shut their business in no time. Politicians feel Microsoft is getting bigger and more influential then many governments around the world.

Why you think Microsoft is the number one IT Company in the world? What makes Bill Gates the richest man on this earth?

Bill Gates in his personal admittance to NDTV said that the only reason Microsoft rules the IT industry in a big way is due to it’s particular product named as Microsoft Windows Operating system. Microsoft makes numerous applications and software such as SQL Database, Microsoft office, Microsoft Exchange server, ISA server etc for PC and other high end computers, but it’s the Windows Operating system that keeps the cash flowing for them in big way.

Since the time Microsoft came into its existence, the Windows Operating system is the product that safeguards them against all competition. What makes its Operating system a hit? Many people believe it has many more features then compare to Linux, Sun Solaris or Mac OS. The average user of PC says it’s the theme of Microsoft OS that is very pleasing compare to others OS. Big IT corporations believes that to develop programs on Windows OS is comparatively easier then doing it on other platform. And if I have to summaries it in one word the popularity of Windows OS; I would say ‘The Ease of Use’. Yes that’s what Microsoft does. Microsoft makes life of users very easy. Almost all the daily task can be done withy just by a click of mouse!

Microsoft has recently in the month of January launched the new OS called Windows Vista at Taj President in Mumbai, India. The launch of Windows Vista was a big party with Akshay Kumar and other Bollywood star performing a BKC. The initial reviews of Microsfoft Vista are just fabulous.

Some of the great features of new Windows Vista are:

• Self-healing technology. It identifies the problems and fixes them so you can keep system disruptions to a minimum.

• Windows Flip 3D, it enables you to dynamically flip through your open programs in a three-dimensional, stacked view, so that you can quickly locate and select the one that you want.

• Windows Sidebar and gadgets, which bring real-time information, like weather and news, directly to your desktop.

• Internet Explorer 7 with Tab browsing, Experience internet browsing in much easier and safe environment.

There are many more features that are new in vista, do check them out at Microsft website before you buy them.
Once again with the launch of vista Microsoft has proved that when it comes to building an OS for machines there is just no beating them. They are simply the King.

I would like to know which OS do you use? Please give me your comments on this post. I appreciate it all the time.

-Stella Roy